Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Thirty-One: Seeing Double, Seeing Far

Vampires think witches are too cold-hearted to cry, but they are wrong. Witches keep their hearts in cages so they can keep their tears locked down, too. Witch's tears are too powerful to waste.Unfortunately, I couldn't stem the flow of mine. I soaked the pillow of that cot with my pain and my power. 

I cried for Nick. 

Not because I loved him with a love that defied all obstacles. I cried because I hadn't. 

I had wanted to be good. So good for him. But I wasn't made for him, and he obviously wasn't made me for me.

So I took those tears, and I took the opportunity this confinement afforded me, and I started acting like a witch instead of a brokenhearted schoolgirl. I did what I'd told Evander I was going to do days ago. I went to work expanding my vision. I took my tears over the wolf in my past and put them to work for the vampire in present.

 The water pitcher on the table had shattered along with the table that Nick had thrown against the wall, so it was easy to find a shard for the cutting required. First, I cut the part of the pillowcase soaked with my tears into a long strip of cloth and placed it on the floor. Then I cut both palms—deep and hard because I needed a lot of blood. I hung my hands until my blood had streamed down all my fingers, and then I stood over the cloth soaked in my tears. My fingers that were coated in blood moved rapidly, flinging the blood onto the strip of cloth in a pattern that I was not consciously directing as I chanted.

I didn't bother with Latin. My father had taught me to cast in the dead language simply because most modern witches couldn't understand it. Concealing the words of my spells gave me an advantage. If they couldn't determine what hex I was about to throw at them, they couldn't counter it as easily.But that was immaterial now because I wasn't hexing anyone. I was weaving a new spell. 

"Blood, tears. Sight, fears. White and black weaver within—show me the fate I must respin."

An image flung in blood began to form on the strip of cloth. It looked like a red ink sketch of Evander, Ace, Dare, and Geordie burning.I sat down cross-legged and picked up the cloth, and tied it over my eyes. 

Immediately, I was inside my vision. Much more present than I had been the first time I had it. This time, I was anchored to a spot. I was screaming. I was being held back and screaming as the vampires cracked and black blood poured out of them, flushing them bit by bit into the cauldrons below. 

This time I was not an external participant in the vision. My tears and my blood had made the vision all that more real. The vision-receiving me was anchored inside the screaming, thrashing, incoherent me that was actually present at the burning. It had never been some random vision snatched from the soil. It had been of my future, as much as Evander's.

The me that was present at the burning, was crying out in pain—so much pain—but the me that was working this spell, squatting insider her, was also separate from her pain, and aware of things she was not. She was aware of nothing but the pain. She was thrashing to get free and someone was holding her back, but the restraint was not what caused her pain.

Evander's death was physically agonizing for her—for me. Evander had been right all along. We were bonded, and as I watched him slowly burn to ash, I was feeling all the pain he felt. I searched inside that me and realized that she would not survive that night. She was not struggling against the thing that held her so that she could fight the witches and werewolves who were burning the vampires. She was struggling to free herself so she could walk into the flames and wrap herself around Evander. I listened to her thoughts like she was a person separate from me. In her mind, she had no choice. She was crazed—possessed by a compulsion to be with him—even in his agonizing death. The only thing that would end her pain was marrying her ash to his.